Posted on 02/25/2012 12:37:19 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Is farming brain-dead chickens more ethical?
Architecture Student André Ford is proposing raising chickens for meat in vertical racks after severing their frontal cortexes, rendering them effectively brain-dead. It would be much, much more efficient, there's no doubt about that, but would it be any more ethical than current factory farms?
The images of the conceptual chicken racks are fairly disturbing- the chickens are suspended, completely immobile, with their feet removed. Tubes feed water and nutrients directly into the them while other tubes carry away waste. The chickens themselves, though, aren't suffering at all, since their brains have been surgically cut in half, rendering them permanently unconscious. Basically, what you're looking at aren't animals anymore: they're just pieces of meat that are being grown for consumption.
A system like this would significantly reduce the amount of space needed to farm chickens, raising productivity while cutting costs. And arguably, it's better for the chickens, too, since being factory farmed is a miserably inhumane experience. In an ideal world, chickens would roam free in the wild, and there'd be no factories at all. But this isn't how it works, and while you're perfectly free to buy only super happy free range organic chickens, demand is such that factory farms aren't likely to disappear.
The fact that this concept is a lot like The Matrix isn't lost on the artist, but in this case, the chickens don't have it nearly as good:
"The similarities are patent, although in The Matrix the dominant species were kind enough to provide the sub-species with a alternate reality, which was far better than the their 'real' post-apocalyptic world. This was a lovely gesture by 'The Machines', but the chickens in this system will not be privy to such a luxurious appendage to an already elaborate system, especially in this age of austerity."
What the chickens would experience might not be a fantasy world filled with the chicken equivalent of the woman in the red dress, but it's possible that no reality is better than the reality of a factory farm. We should be clear that this is just an art project, and as far as we know no chickens were harmed in the making of it, but it definitely raises some questions about some of the ways in which we get our food.
So, what do you think? Are brain-dead chickens in racks a more ethical way to manufacture food, or not?
The chicken is just a machine that converts grain into tasty meat protein. Rather than the disturbing process described in this article, why not concentrate on developing a more efficient machine for the conversion? The proteins that comprise meat can be grown artificially with all the chemical (and nutritional) properties of the “real thing” (if still somewhat lacking in some of the flavor subtleties). Spend the effort on refining that process, not in developing some diabolical machinery like this that still uses living tissue, regardless of how lobotomized (or “Democrat-ized”) it is.
We’re getting our first batch of chickens this spring. The missus has been working on me for a few years now. I’m drawing up plans for the “chicken tractor” now. It is portable so as to move over the fallow garden areas in preparation for next year. We’ll see. :{)
Debeaking has been standard practice since (at least) before WWII. It wouldn’t suprise me to learn that it’s been around for hundreds of years. It has nothing to do with ‘going beserk’.
Where do you think the phrase ‘pecking order’ came from?
It came from observing chickens and how they naturally interact with the weaker chickens.
The democRat party is an advertisement for Soylent Green.
5.56mm
I had some really crappy quality chicken tonight. Now I know why.
I saw his right after pitching my chicken in the garbage.
Now, I am gonna go puke.
I wonder if a chicken thread like similar to the gardening threads would be acceptable?
We are riding the edge of giving it a try but knowing some good first-hand experience sure would be nice!
I started to research and it seemed so wide open on opinions and such that it was overwhelming!
What kind of chickens are y’all getting? I am not even sure where to start. :p
“Anyone with the slightest bit of concern for the welfare of chickens that are raised to be consumed is brain-dead themselves.”
Wow. Not only do you manage to come off as completely callous towards animals with that statement, but you also manage to insult your fellow man, simply for wishing to be benevolent.
“You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”—Malcolm S. Forbes.
Is this some kind of metaphor for Congress?
Just start off with some white leghorn layers. Get pullets instead of chicks. They should lay for 3-3 1/2 years.
Our friends and neighbors down the road have a farm with various and sundry critters including many varieties of chickens (which I have baby-sat when they go on vacations). They are a wealth of information and experience. We are lucky.
Yes, my father grew turkeys from pullets to processing, they all had to be debeaked.
My mother raised what are now called free range chickens. I remember she tried it without debeaking. It got really ugly and bloody as they grew older, so Dad ended up killing a bunch of them. After that everything got debeaked.
I’d say chickens packed into such close quarters that they end up pecking each other to death in quantities large enough to rationalize cutting all their beaks off to prevent it, are going berserk. Pecking order, henpecked, yes they refer to innate behavior. However, broiler chickens typically are not kept alive long enough for such dominance displays to become a problem, outside being crammed into extremely close quarters.
The practice was first performed in the thirties in a university research setting. It was the fifties before it began to be adopted, with breeding stock and not withbroiler hens. By the seventies, modern factory farming methods began to become common, and with consolidation in the industry, it is by far and away the predominant method, outside so-called free range operations, which themselves often actually aren’t.
So, you speak as if current practice is common and accepted, going back more than a genetation, when in fact it isn’t, having been banned in numerous countries.
Thanks!
BMfLR
No, no, no, no, no!!!!!! This is beyond horrifying.
I think we have more and more idiots living in this country that are a growing problem we will soon have to stop ignoring and start dealing with.
Their beaks were burnt? Like, like a coyote grabbed them by the neck and rammed their beak into a red hot anvil?
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